David, where I was wrong in the way I answered Lou, and I've been thinking
about it for hours, was in the absurdly uncomradely way I dismissied Nader -
uncomradely to Lou, that is. If he feels and people I respect feels there is
some point to promoting Nader, then it's crass for someone to arrive boots
first in the discussion from a long way off and without first hand knowledge
or without hvaing sensed the mood at first hand, so Mea maxima culpa. In
short, it's wrong for me to label Nader a 'dubious creep' and thank you for
giving me the chance to correct myself.
What I'd like to see is for Lou to develop his thoughts about why Nader
should be campaigned for, and why in general we should be putting forward
Father Gapon figures (I know, shouldn't call him that way either). So my
tone was wrong to .
I understand the parall;el you want to draw with Livingstone. He is also a
compromised figure, but I supported him, right? Well, I think Nader should
be supported, but he should be persistently challenged on his polices and
his ideas.
However, there one slight difference between Nader and Livingstone (several
actually). Livingstone won. He, too, should be and was and is challenged.
But he represented a huge plurality. Nader may get around 10%. That is not a
plurality, that is a man and a programme which in general we ought to
reject, capturing the left/greens as a constituency and that is not a goal
worth turning into a cheshire cat over. What happens afterwards, the next
time someone tries to organise something big? They will have the whole,
federally-financed electoral apparatus of the Greens to answer to. It won't
be pretty, it will awful.
But I'd like to hear more from Lou.
Mark Jones
http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList
- Original Message -
From: "David Welch" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Saturday, July 01, 2000 11:16 PM
Subject: [PEN-L:21164] Re: RE: The Nader Campaign, part three: historical
precendents and sectarianism
On Sat, Jul 01, 2000 at 10:51:40PM +0100, Mark Jones wrote:
Just like telling
people to abandon all doubt "commit their heart and soul", fall glumly
silent, and then give their all for some dubious creep like Ralph Nader,
in
fact.
Or Ken Livingstone?
